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Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.
Big Ups From Abroad for Bruning, 'Chronicle'
RECEIVED Tue., Jan. 17, 2012
Dear Editor,
First, big compliments from Switzerland. The Austin Chronicle is a pretty good and cool newspaper in any way!
I just read the amazing, surprising, and positive story from the 2000 "Best of Austin" Critics Picks for Arts & Entertainment about a good friend of mine, Brent Bruning. That's still him all over. And I'll hope he will do that “Best Way To Rock the Boat, Baby: Aquatica” once again.
He is still – besides his full-time job as an IT project leader – really active, full of creative ideas, and really talented in different projects and activities like music, charity projects, and projects in arts.
He has lived and worked many years in Switzerland and the city of the real techno scene.
First, big compliments from Switzerland. The Austin Chronicle is a pretty good and cool newspaper in any way!
I just read the amazing, surprising, and positive story from the 2000 "Best of Austin" Critics Picks for Arts & Entertainment about a good friend of mine, Brent Bruning. That's still him all over. And I'll hope he will do that “Best Way To Rock the Boat, Baby: Aquatica” once again.
He is still – besides his full-time job as an IT project leader – really active, full of creative ideas, and really talented in different projects and activities like music, charity projects, and projects in arts.
He has lived and worked many years in Switzerland and the city of the real techno scene.
Kind regards from Zurich, Switzerland,
Susanne Eveline Schibli
Susanne Eveline Schibli
P.S. I have been, among other things, a librarian and work independently (at my own small company in employment services) in Zurich.
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Formula One Is Just Not Green
RECEIVED Mon., Jan. 16, 2012
Dear Editor,
It is laudable that efforts are being made to green the Formula One project, but the sad truth is that F1 cannot ever be very green as long as the water management strategy being forced upon it by the city of Austin remains very, very un-green. This sort of event-driven venue is perfect for distributed reuse. Wastewater would be flush-water dominated, so flush-water recycling – done, for example, at Gillette Stadium where the New England Patriots play – is a natural fit. Other flows could defray irrigation demands. Combine this with rainwater harvesting off the large roof this project will entail and we might approach water independence – through point-of-use generation and reuse, the project lives largely off water falling on it.
Why don’t we consider those strategies instead of pumping potable water out there to serve these nonpotable functions? And why don’t we save a whole lot of energy that wouldn’t be needed to move that water to and from this project? And, in turn, save the water consumed to produce that energy?
Austin Water, however, insists on installing a 3-mile-long wastewater main, draining to a lift station out at the edge of its current system. A line it's telling us ratepayers we have to pay for, to the tune of $8.1 million. The justification for that? Austin Water says because it's a setup to provide wastewater service to this whole basin.
Well, first, it's going to install a whole bunch more high-cost trunk mains. But more importantly, what Austin Water is saying is that it wants to manage wastewater over this whole basin on the basis that it’s a nuisance and it has to go “away.” Austin Water appears not interested in how to manage it, right from its point of generation, as a resource. Austin Water is, in fact, reported to have said about the very idea of distributed reuse, “Oh no, we don’t want to do that.”
As long as the city of Austin doesn't want to move toward sustainable water, nothing about this city will ever be truly green.
It is laudable that efforts are being made to green the Formula One project, but the sad truth is that F1 cannot ever be very green as long as the water management strategy being forced upon it by the city of Austin remains very, very un-green. This sort of event-driven venue is perfect for distributed reuse. Wastewater would be flush-water dominated, so flush-water recycling – done, for example, at Gillette Stadium where the New England Patriots play – is a natural fit. Other flows could defray irrigation demands. Combine this with rainwater harvesting off the large roof this project will entail and we might approach water independence – through point-of-use generation and reuse, the project lives largely off water falling on it.
Why don’t we consider those strategies instead of pumping potable water out there to serve these nonpotable functions? And why don’t we save a whole lot of energy that wouldn’t be needed to move that water to and from this project? And, in turn, save the water consumed to produce that energy?
Austin Water, however, insists on installing a 3-mile-long wastewater main, draining to a lift station out at the edge of its current system. A line it's telling us ratepayers we have to pay for, to the tune of $8.1 million. The justification for that? Austin Water says because it's a setup to provide wastewater service to this whole basin.
Well, first, it's going to install a whole bunch more high-cost trunk mains. But more importantly, what Austin Water is saying is that it wants to manage wastewater over this whole basin on the basis that it’s a nuisance and it has to go “away.” Austin Water appears not interested in how to manage it, right from its point of generation, as a resource. Austin Water is, in fact, reported to have said about the very idea of distributed reuse, “Oh no, we don’t want to do that.”
As long as the city of Austin doesn't want to move toward sustainable water, nothing about this city will ever be truly green.
David Venhuizen, P.E.
Ron Paul Fails Test
RECEIVED Thu., Jan. 12, 2012
Dear Editor,
Mrs. Jordon gave us a 10-question math quiz once a week. One incorrect answer and you got a B; two wrong answers were a C; three earned you a D; and four were an F.
Sixty percent is failing. This is why Ron Paul fails. His wrong answers: the Christian nation; the war on Christmas; no separation of church and state; desegregation of private business is bad; the EPA is bad; OSHA is bad; equal pay for women is bad; all abortions are bad; the Civil War was unnecessary (the North could have bought the slaves from the South – that's a good one). It's a long list. Will Barack Obama bomb Iran or support Israel if it does? I hope not. What sort of Supreme Court justice would Ron Paul appoint? Ultraconservative, of course, and all that would entail (for the lifetime of the justice). All of our choices are rotten, including the incumbent, but Ron Paul is no more the messiah than the last guy we elected.
Mrs. Jordon gave us a 10-question math quiz once a week. One incorrect answer and you got a B; two wrong answers were a C; three earned you a D; and four were an F.
Sixty percent is failing. This is why Ron Paul fails. His wrong answers: the Christian nation; the war on Christmas; no separation of church and state; desegregation of private business is bad; the EPA is bad; OSHA is bad; equal pay for women is bad; all abortions are bad; the Civil War was unnecessary (the North could have bought the slaves from the South – that's a good one). It's a long list. Will Barack Obama bomb Iran or support Israel if it does? I hope not. What sort of Supreme Court justice would Ron Paul appoint? Ultraconservative, of course, and all that would entail (for the lifetime of the justice). All of our choices are rotten, including the incumbent, but Ron Paul is no more the messiah than the last guy we elected.
Tim Pipe
